Is Obama suffering from the second term jinx?

This past week has been no laughing matter for the president, and even “Saturday Night Live” took note, joking about selling a cure for Obama’s second-term blues. David Gregory on “Meet the Press” offered his perspective.

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This content comes from Closed Captioning that was broadcast along with this program.

>>politics and
president obama
's rough week with the future of his
health care
plan up in the air and a series of apologies this week for its botched rollout, "saturday night live" took a
little time
to poke a little fun at the situation last night.

>>are you feeling depressed, run down, like you just can't win? are you the
president of the united states
? ask your doctor for paxil, second-term strength, the only antidepressant strong enough for an embattled second term.

>>not sure that plays as well in the
white house
as it does maybe to us.
david gregory
is mott moderator of "meet the press." good morning.

>>good morning e erica.
president obama
's
health care
compared to katrina. you liken it more to his
iraq war
. what do you mean by that?

>>that's
life and death
. this is not. i don't mean to use that comparison. i think for
president bush
in his second term the
iraq war
became the overarching issue and his handling of it became the issue through whichever thing else was judged. if he wanted to do
immigration reform
, he was still in the iraq box. that's how implementation of
health care
will be for this president for the balance of his second term, somebody who is managing obama care, he'll be judged more in terms of what else government can do or should do. it will all be about the handling of it. this is kind of progressive government on trial here in a sense. can a
central government
do something that big and transformative and do it well? i think that's a big test for this president's
world view
.

>>the president says when he was apologizing on thursday, acknowledging he needed to in his words win back credibility of the
american people
, does he also need to win back the credibility of his own party, especially after what we saw in the house this week?

>>it's less about credibility and more about panic. democrats see a shaken presidency and they care more about him than themselves especially when they're up for re-election and he's not. if it's not going well, they may pay the price next year in a midterm race. it's still a little early for that because we're in the middle of this terrible couple weeks here on obama care. this can fade. the only thing that succeeds is success when it comes to implementation. it seems like there's going to be a lot of difficulties to be managed. the longer this goes on, the more problematic it is politically.

>>turning to
2016
, rumblings about
paul ryan
after being in iowa this weekend. is he seriously eyeing a bid?

>>i think he's taking a real look at it and making an assessment. i think anybody on the
republican side
is trying to figure out whether the establishment can win out over the more muscular conservative wing of the party,
ted cruz
, rand paul and others.
chris christie
's victory gave him some fortitude here. i think
paul ryan
is someone who is kind of an architect of a lot of the
economic policies
of the
republican party
, feels like he's in a position to push it in a new direction. he saw what happened with the romney campaign and realizes they need some change. he's going to represent more of an establishment wing which is interesting it means the party has moved further right if it's considered more establishment.